The theory of strong interactions is an elegant quantum field theory known as Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD). QCD is deceptively simple to formulate, but notoriously difficult to solve. This simplicity belies the diverse set of physical phenomena that fall under its domain, from nuclear forces and bound hadrons, to high energy jets and gluon radiation.

Shear viscosity is a transport coefficient in the hydrodynamic description of liquids, gases and plasmas. The ratio of the shear viscosity and the volume density of the entropy has the dimension of the ratio of two fundamental constants - the Planck constant and the Boltzmann constant - and characterizes how close a given fluid is to a perfect fluid. Transport coefficients are notoriously difficult to compute from first principles.

Theories of physics beyond the Standard Model predict the existence of relativistic strings, either as composite objects, or as fundamental constituents of matter. If they were created in the Big Bang, they would very likely still be present in the universe today. This talk reviews the thirty year history of cosmic strings, and describes the latest work which finds intriguing hints in the Cosmic Microwave Background data that the universe is filled with string.

Some of the speculations on new physics, beyond what is in the standard model are reviewed. Particular attention is paid to ideas that try to address the hierarchy puzzle, i.e., why is the weak scale so much smaller than the Planck scale. These new theories will be tested at the large hadron collider in the near future.

Experimentalists at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider create exploding droplets of quark-gluon plasma, the stuff which filled the universe for the first microseconds after the big bang. I'll give one theorist's perspective on what we are learning about the properties of quark-gluon plasma from these experiments, including the conclusion that it is closer to an ideal liquid than to an ideal gas and the observation that it "quenches" high energy quarks ("jets") trying to plow through it.

Soon after Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD) was shown to exhibit asymptotic freedom at short distances, it was realized that it might be possible to create a new form of matter at high temperatures (T d 150 MeV) in which hadrons dissolve and quarks and gluons become locally deconfined. Experiments have been carried out for the last two decades attempting to create this new form of matter, called ¡§quark-gluon plasma¡¨ (QGP), via high-energy collisions of large nuclei.

With a cosmic flight simulator, we'll take a scenic journey through space and time. After exploring
our local Galactic neighborhood, we'll travel back 13.7 billion years to explore the Big Bang itself and
how state-of-the-art measurements are transforming our understanding of our cosmic origin and ultimate fate.
We then turn to the question of whether this can all be described purely mathematically, and discuss
implications ranging from standard physics topics like symmetries, irreducible representations, units,

Understanding magnetic reconnection is one of the major challenges of plasma physics. It plays an essential role in a wide range of physical systems such as stellar flares, accretion disks, active galactic nuclei, astrophysical dynamos and closer to home, intense magnetic energy releases in the Earth's magnetosphere. It is a phenomena which can be created in the laboratory.

If spacetime is "quantized" (discrete), then any equation of motion compatible with the Lorentz transformations is necessarily non-local. I will present evidence that this sort of nonlocality survives on length scales much greater than Planckian, yielding for example a nonlocal effective wave-equation for a scalar field propagating on an underlying causal set. Nonlocality of our effective field theories may thus provide a characteristic signature of quantum gravity.